The Shop at 6 Months

[gee-dub]

I thought an update on things that were winners and losers might help others who are planning or reorganizing.

Drawers and nearby storage at the bench, still a winner.

You can buy weight plates at garage sales for pennies. They make great weights for center-clamping large panels.

Clamps and cauls close by and the wall mounted tool cabinet, winner.

You can see that odds and ends gather in open areas.  I'm a loser in this area right now but getting better as more storage and better decisions as to what needs to be close at hand are made.  If you try to have everything handy, nothing is really handy .

Dust Deputy on the shop vac, total winner. Wall mounted hose reel, bonus.

I have tried to clean the filters in my DD units for years. There's never anything in them.
The little mirror over the electrical panels bounces my infrared DC controller back to the receiver from the tablesaw position.  Wish it was RF.

Rolling tables. I've watched others use them for years. If you have the room for even one, winner.

I use them to ferry stock through the milling process, ferry clamps and materials back and forth, hold glue ups, and act as finishing stands.

Sheet goods corral and panel-shorts stash, winner.

Even though I have twice the room I had before the swinging sheet goods rack has still been great.  I only use the double doors for bringing large stuff in and out so the normal position has become as shown.  Again, odds and ends gather in open areas. At least at this stage it is an ever changing pile of . . . items.

Sharpening stuff near the sink, winner. 

A design for a sharpening station/cabinet is percolating. In the mean time I had a spare metal shelf unit.  If you zoom in you can see the commercial version of a sump/trap under the sink.  At the old shop I made one out of some ABS and a spaghetti sauce jar.

The shop made and commercial versions both screw off and on easily for emptying.  My sink is on a french drain so I want to trap heavy or thick items before they head out of the shop.

Oh, also the small bandsaw on wheels is a winner.

The quad of milling machines with a central core for dust collection and electrical supply, winner.

Although it has a large footprint it is smaller than the area for machines spread out, DC ducted, powered, and open areas for operation.
Another use for the carts is that I use them to hold stacks of parts as they go from bandsaw to jointer to planer to jointer to (sometimes) sander.

Wall pegs behind the tablesaw and router table to hold the many jigs and accessories that go with them, winner.

I used to keep them in a pile in a sort of corral against the wall.  That was a pain.

Putting the DC outside the shop (in a bump out), winner.
Saved me easily 30+ square feet of floor space.

The spray booth . . . uh . . . .

The area where the spray booth will eventually go . Good idea. Still planned.  Once I make a few things I will scale back my lumber-on-hand so that this area can fulfill its original purpose.

In short, focus areas of activity have served me well so far. Much less running from one end of the shop to the other. Other things that paid off:

- Lotsa lights
- Lotsa outlets

- DC outside
- HVAC
- Sink

[curlyoak]

If there is an after life I want it to look just like that!

[pkinneb]

What a great space!!

[gee-dub]

Thanks guys.  Someone asked offline about powered hand tools and general storage so I'll dump that here.  The original plan called for my two commercial storage cabinets and a typical red Craftsman rolling tool box to live on the opposite side of the wall from the workbench.  This means a short walk for items in these cabinets but so far this has worked out fine. 

Here's the view 180 degrees from the last pic in the previous post.

The Craftsman tool box holds mostly non-woodworking tools; sockets, wrenches, pliers, sledge  hammers, etc.  Some items are still wood shop items like files, corded drill motors, glue gun, and the like. 

The file cabinet holds plans, magazines and manuals. 

The brown metal cabinet is a combination of tools and storage. An angle grinder that I reserve for woodworking only, a laser level(?), and my Mortise Pal live on the top shelf next to some of my standardized plastic shoebox storage.

Below that is a corral of routers and bases.


Below that is a pullout that holds larger hardware storage, some torch stuff and my oscillating multi tool / heads / blades.


Below that is a pullout with a small bandsaw, more routers and bases and my ROS stuff.


Next to the brown metal cabinet is the blue metal cabinet (official industry names ) which is primarily storage. It holds a mix of tackle boxes for smaller items, shoeboxes for stuff that's a bit bigger, and latch top bins for still larger (or larger amounts of small) items. The open box shown holds my Dremel tools, fixtures and bits. There are also all those router and sander attachments, dust ports, edge guides, these can become a problem if not organized a bit.


I use a cordless jigsaw for cutting stock to length.


It seems to live under the bench top for no reason I can think of other than it is out of my way and always there when I go look for it. It replaces a chop saw for me and takes up almost no room.
I inherited a couple of drill motors from dad so they and an inexpensive Hitachi drill set live at the bench for casual hole requirements.


I mentioned always reaching for a drill motor. This can be for drilling holes, taking things apart, buffing / wire wheeling things, whatever. I just keep them near where I seem to use them.


That's pretty much it for me on small powered hand tools. I keep my compressor and brad nailers on a bottom shelf of a roll around cart. They serve as ballast much more than as tools.


Same goes for my vacuum gluing setup. Used seldom and could be stored elsewhere. For now it seems happy enough on the other rolling table shelf.


Time will tell. I hope someone sees or reads something that gives them an idea for their own work area. It's always evolving it seems.

 

 

 

[legenddc]

On 6/5/2022 at 2:08 PM, gee-dub said:

Wall pegs behind the tablesaw and router table to hold the many jigs and accessories that go with them, winner.

I used to keep them in a pile in a sort of corral against the wall.  That was a pain.

Do you have any close up pics of the sled holders or could you explain how they're built? I thought I had seen some from you but couldn't find any after re-reading your shop build thread. Just 3/4" plywood for the french cleat?

Hoping to hang up all my sleds to get them all off the floor.

[gee-dub]

Funny, I went and searched and apparently never posted a build on these.  I will make a thread and post the link here in just a few minutes.

Here you go.

 

[oldman_pottering]

looks good enough to be a commercial outfit ! how the hell do you choose which router ??

[gee-dub]

@oldman_pottering  Once upon a time Amazon had one of their infamous price goof-ups and sold the Milwaukee combo set for $103 for about a day and a half.  I already had 4 or 5 Milwaukees so I picked up a couple more.  The 5615 and 5616 models are all exchangeable between bases so you can have the base dedicated to edge work, dovetails, dados, or whatever and just swap in the motor that is appropriate for your job. 

5615's are fixed speed 1-3/4HP units and the 5616's are variable speed 2-1/4HP units.  I do the same with my older Bosch Colts.  Except for my first one these were also picked up on the cheap when the price dropped following the introduction of the more powerful version.

If you keep what your looking for in mind you can strike when a deal comes along.